Hello Giantbomb
By Poppycock 1 Comments
If you stumbled in here you're probably just wondering who I am or where I get off being so rude. I am Poppycock! Obviously! I have played games since the Super Nintendo, having spent the vulnerable days of my youth enjoying Donkey Kong Country and Kirby. Since then, I have also owned the N64, Playstation, PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360, and Wii. I have a soft spot in my heart for Rareware games and the Metal Gear Solid series. I don't typically get many new games, but play the ones I do get quite a bit. Seeing as I'm already halfway through my inauguration blog, I might as well provide some sort of game related content. How about a Top Ten? Everybody loves a Top Ten! Except those awful Letterman ones. Anyway:
Top Ten Favorite Games
10. Dead Rising: One of the newest games on the list, I heard the premise for Dead Rising and thought it sounded clever, but wouldn't be any good. So wrong! The mix of different survivors to save, weapons to find (and mutilate zombies with), sense of humor present in the dialogue and moves, and stores to explore made Dead Rising an eye opening experience of what the next generation of consoles were really capable of. The joy filled sensation of mowing over a zombie pretty much symbolizes all the lunatic fun I had throughout Dead Rising, making it one of my all time favorites.
9. Super Mario Galaxy: I am not at all a Mario person. I didn't much care for any previous Mario platformers I tried, but I got Galaxy nonetheless just to give my Wii a tenant. After playing it for a while, I was filled with the innocent glee of the heady days of the N64. Mario Galaxy is the embodiment of all the simple joys that make gaming worthwhile. Constantly charming, surprising, and relaxing (Well, up until the frustrating purple coin challenges), Galaxy is the purest gaming experience of the current generation of games.
8. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: Metal Gear Solid has the most brilliantly written characters in gaming, to the extent where it almost seems adapted from some lost novel. Metal Gear Solid has the brilliant fourth-wall breaking and zany humor that makes a game lovable. Also, the third installment has my favorite gameplay yet in the series, since sneaking through the jungle as Snake while dodging traps and quietly taking out guards gives me immense satisfaction. Snake Eater plays out like a James Bond movie and honestly, what more could you want from a spy game with a Cold War setting?
7. Project Gotham Racing 2: I'm the first to admit it, I am a massive car guy. However, Gran Turismo and Forza remove all the fun of driving cars by including OCD-levels of tuning and by forcing you to start off in a crappier car than the one in your driveway. In PGR2, one may find the nirvana of real life handling kept in perfect balance with arcade racing physics. Added to this the best online community for any Xbox Live game and an array of racing modes (including the genius Cat and Mouse) and you get my favorite racing game ever. PGR3 and PGR4 are also phenomenal, but somewhat lack the magic of 2. Oh, and 2 has the original Geometry Wars, in case you didn't love it already.
6. Final Fantasy VII: I know, I know. Having FF7 as your favorite is a total cliche at this point. But I don't care. FF7 hit me at the perfect age, because I was just old enough for a more complicated type of game and loved the complex story lines. This being my first RPG, every new discovery was something magical, and the memorable characters and setting made it something even specialler. By the time FF8 rolled around, I was old enough to realize how annoying and melodramatic all the characters were and how predictable the plot was. Despite liking FF9, my heart for RPG's and the Final Fantasy series has never been the same.
5. Banjo Kazooie: I love this game! It's mix of charm and lunacy give it more of a personality than Mario 64 had, while the gameplay was phenomenal for it's encouragement of exploration and figuring out puzzles with your constantly expanding set of moves. Â Flying over worlds like Click Clock Wood and Treasure Trove Cove is etched in my memory as the perfect way to spend time during my youth. Fuck climbing trees.
4. Perfect Dark: Another N64 classic from Rare. This was the ultimate multiplayer game for the N64 and definitely one of the best First Person Shooters of its day. It's got the best maps from Goldeneye, a campaign with many complex level objectives and gadgets, and some completely mad weapons. The Farsight and the Laptop gun are the tools of your destruction. Just play me and see...
3. Metal Gear Solid: All the things I said I loved about the MGS series in #8 still apply. So what makes the first one rank so higher than 3? Nostalgia, mostly. That and I the characters of Foxhound are far more memorable than the Cobras. Also, the storyline of the first game still reigns supreme among the series in my book. And finally, because of the boss battle with Psycho Mantis. He totally moved my controller. I SAW it.
2. Halo: Combat Evolved: I am aware that Halo is not "teh b3stes7 gaime everz" but it still holds a special place in my heart for all the good times I had playing it with friends. Finding the Cartographer on co-op, getting lost in the Library, and complaining through CTF on Blood Gulch are some of the best times I've ever had with video games. Playing system link Xbox's with stupid strategies to take out the enemy sniper was brilliant, and the best part was that no stupid Bubble Shield or Cheeto quaffing brat could ruin it for me. Can't say the same for the other Halo games...
1. Donkey Kong Country: Honestly, Donkey Kong Country 1, 2, and 3 turned me into a gamer. They were all pure fun, and didn't need 3D graphics or motion controls. Just videogames at the simplest make for plain fun. The graphics and character of the games have helped them weather the sands of time better than most SNES games, but the gameplay still stands out as timeless. If you can't time jumps in a monkey filled minecart, you're not a gamer to me.
Well, that's who I am out of the way. Well, at least who I am as a gamer. Now that you're done making mental notes about how my favorites list is 'all wrong' and how Halo is 'nowhere close to beating FF7 quality-wise' you just need to be know why I'm so rude... IT'S BECAUSE I CAN BE. And being all pretentious and snide makes me feel better about not being one of the Giantbomb in-crowd. That's that, I'm off to have a cry now.
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